Chapter 151: I have to emphasize it again
"Do you want to learn tarot cards?"
"Can I?"
"Of course you can. It's all just trickery. Once you master the art of speaking, it's really simple."
"..."
Jiang He suddenly turned her head. "So, you're saying you’ll break up with ?"
???
Xu Qing froze.
"Ahem... What I an is, so things are lies, and so aren't. After all, when it cos to predicting the future, no one can really verify it. As long as people believe it, that's all that matters."
The crystal ball just said the two of them would get married—that was a lie—they wouldn’t get married.
As Xu Qing was explaining, his phone buzzed. It was a ssage from Qin Hao, letting him know that he’d already sent Liu Jingfang ho and was on his way back. He asked Xu Qing how things were going via WeChat.
Sexy? Yes, but she wasn’t Qin Hao’s type. He’d been conflicted for a long ti.
"If she doesn’t feel right, just end it early. If you think it’s worth a try, then give it a shot," Xu Qing advised like a seasoned father, offering advice to the steel-hearted straight man.
"I agree she’s not right, but given my situation, am I being ungrateful?"
Qin Hao was well aware of his own circumstances. If he married soone like her, he wasn’t even sure he could keep her. He had neither money nor looks, and his only realistic wish was to find soone compatible, settle down, and take care of Qin Maocai in the future.
"When it cos to relationships, there’s no such thing as being ungrateful. It’s all about whether the match is right or not."
Jiang He was fiddling with her bag as she walked alongside Xu Qing. Her off-white coat glead faintly yellow under the streetlights, and her long ponytail bobbed behind her as she walked, only left loose when she was at ho. The motion of her hair mirrored the shadows of their footsteps on the ground.
Hearing Xu Qing’s words, she seed to catch onto sothing and raised her head. "What do you an by 'not compatible'? You still haven’t explained."
The conversation about his ex-girlfriend from earlier had sohow gone off track, leaving her clueless about why there was an ex or why they broke up.
"Not compatible is when..." Xu Qing scratched his head, pocketed his phone, and thought for a mont. "When you're with , you don’t feel uncomfortable. That’s compatibility. The opposite isn’t."
"What I want to know is about your ex-girlfriend."
"You’re acting very modern right now," Xu Qing sighed deeply. Do won all have the sa curiosity when it cos to ex-girlfriends?
It’s said that Fang Xuanling, back in the day, was a paragon of fidelity. While others had multiple wives and concubines, this pri minister only had one because he feared his wife. At a banquet, soone mocked him for it. Fang Xuanling got angry and insisted he wasn’t afraid, that his wife would do whatever he said. Emperor Taizong overheard this and decided to test him by gifting him two beauties. Fang Xuanling was half-sober with fear from the wine but didn’t dare refuse and reluctantly took them ho. His wife, Madam Lu, chased the won out with a stick, forcing the emperor to intervene and diate. Taizong even set out a jar of vinegar, claiming it was poison, and said she could either drink it or let the won stay. Without hesitation, Madam Lu drank the entire jar.
And that’s where the term "jealousy" ca from.
Jealousy clearly transcends eras, and Xu Qing had every reason to suspect that Jiang He was jealous—of his ex-girlfriend, no less.
"You said before that going to a brothel was normal. Isn’t that what you told ?" he asked.
"What does that have to do with your ex-girlfriend?"
"Uh… it doesn’t?"
"Or is it because she didn’t agree to you going to a brothel?" Jiang He switched gears and proposed a random theory.
"I’ve never been to a brothel, not before and not in the future," Xu Qing solemnly vowed as he led Jiang He down a quieter street for a walk.
Though it was nightti, with Jiang He nearby—or even if she weren’t—he could easily handle any incident involving public safety. Alone, he could take on five people, and if it ca to that, he could call Qin Hao to clean up and take credit for the ss.
Before taking any action, though, he’d definitely ensure Jiang He was out of harm’s way. Now that his martial prowess had improved, he couldn’t help but want to test it.
"Back to my ex," Xu Qing said. "At the ti, it was all hormones. At first, everything was great. Love is blind, right? But after the novelty wore off, problems started surfacing. Whether two people are compatible only becos clear in the daily grind."
"What kind of problems?"
"For example… the simplest one. I don’t care much about what I eat, wear, or where I live, but she always wanted to have the best. She’d spend beyond her ans to buy all kinds of things—shoes, wallets, clothes. She thought she was being nice, but I wasn’t happy at all."
Jiang He frowned. "Isn’t that what she’s supposed to do?"
"It shouldn’t be, though. If I liked those things, sure, it’d be nice. But I didn’t need them." Xu Qing sighed as if recalling a frustrating mory. "I told her many tis that I didn’t need those things, but she still saved and scraped to buy them. We started fighting because of it. It was like she wanted to be my mom or sothing. I call it a ‘mother-style relationship.’"
He glanced at Jiang He and chuckled. "This isn’t the sa as us. I just want to let you experience things you’ve never tried before, within my ans. If you tell you don’t want sothing, I won’t do it again—like going to a buffet or whatever. Get it?"
"So, you broke up because of that?" Jiang He looked incredulous.
"That’s what incompatibility is," Xu Qing explained. "I wanted an orange; she gave a handful of peanuts. And she gave so much. I was grateful, but I felt miserable being with her, and she felt miserable being with . So we broke up peacefully."
Xu Qing smiled faintly and looked into the distance. "The last ti we fought, I’d already eaten at four in the afternoon. But by six, she thought I was hungry and brought food, insisting I eat. I asked her why she was forcing to eat when I wasn’t hungry. She said it was because she cared about and didn’t want to go hungry."
"...You two had too much food," Jiang He quipped after a mont of silence.
"Haha, not really. You’ll understand soday. Many tis, there’s no right or wrong, just incompatibility." Xu Qing chuckled, shaking his head. "That’s why I say, if you ever want to leave, I’ll let you go. Staying together by force is tough. Right now, I like you, but if there’s ever a day I don’t…"
"I’ll kill you," Jiang He interrupted, narrowing her eyes.
"Ahem… actually, I was saying, if you ever stop liking —"
"I won’t."
"Hm?"
Xu Qing blinked. "So… are you going to say you like ? You’ve never said it."
"You already touched my leg."
Jiang He looked away but quickly turned back to stare at him seriously. "If that day ever cos, I really will kill you."
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